An Air Force scientist was accused of tricking a defense contractor into hiring an unqualified sex worker as a military researcher

• A senior Air Force scientist allegedly tricked a defense contractor into hiring a sex worker, according to court records.
• The woman was also named co-chair of a scientific panel despite lacking necessary qualifications.

A senior scientist working for the US Air Force tricked a military contractor into hiring a sex worker he thought was "hot," according to a recently unsealed search warrant application first published by The Daily Beast.

Jim Gord, a senior researcher who was working on advanced propulsion technologies at Ohio's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base at the time, paid for the services of a 32-year-old sex worker using a government credit card before taking steps to get her hired as a contractor at the Air Force Research Laboratory, the document details.

Gord allegedly urged his friend, civilian military contractor Sukesh Roy with Spectral Energies, to hire the unnamed woman in 2017 after giving him a doctored resume claiming she had a degree in biochemistry, among other impressive yet fictitious qualifications. He is said to have spoken highly of the woman's "technical expertise" and claimed he'd met her on a flight to Washington D.C. He finished the conversation by telling Roy she was "also really hot."

Gord, who was married for over 30 years, had really met the woman in Cincinnati and charged her $400-per-hour rate for sex work to his government travel card. According to the Dec. 2019 search warrant application, he also kept a spreadsheet on his government-issued computer called "Burner Log" detailing past relationships with 27 sex workers across the US.

"Many of the 27 women listed on the spreadsheet were foreign nationals from countries considered US national security concerns," an affidavit filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio said.

Roy reported these allegations about Gord, according to the document filed by a special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Gord was never charged in connection with the warrant prior to his death from unnamed causes in September 2021; the woman identified as a sex worker also has not been charged, according to The Daily Beast.

Gord allegedly would introduce the woman he got hired as a contractor as a "research assistant." He also named her co-chair of a scientific panel of researchers designing turbine engines, detonation engines, scramjets and rockets.

After her hiring as an administrative technician at Spectral Energies, Roy told investigators it quickly became clear that the woman was not up to the task, explaining that she "did not fully understand how to use basic word processing and document creation software and struggled to formulate coherent interoffice emails."

When Roy confronted Gord about the woman's incompetence, Gord came clean. He told Roy the woman was a prostitute and that he used his government travel card so his family finances were not visibly affected, according to the special agent's application. Roy then met with an attorney to discuss terminating the woman's employment at her one-year review in Nov. 2018.

Gord, upon learning of Roy's plan to fire the woman, said he would show up "with one of his many guns" to "end it all," which Roy believed meant he would kill him and then himself, according to the search warrant. Gord also said that because Roy, who is originally from Bangladesh, is an immigrant, the "old boys club" at the Air Force Research Laboratory would never believe him even if he told people the truth.

Two weeks before Roy planned to fire her, Gord moved more than half of the government funds typically allocated to Roy's company to a rival company, Innovative Scientific Solutions, where the woman was hired after abruptly resigning from her previous post.

According to the recently unsealed warrant, the woman was also "engaged in acts of prostitution" with other scientists from the AFRL at Wright-Patterson.

Gord's alleged scheme was unraveled in the fall of 2019 when Roy told investigators that Gord had engaged in "unethical government contract negotiations, had communicated threats of violence and was regularly soliciting prostitution while on the installation and while traveling on official US Air Force business."

Prior to his death, Gord was "an internationally recognized leader in the development and application of optical measurement techniques for advanced propulsion and fuel systems," according to the AFRL.